Derby Girl

September 10, 2007
Debut novelist Cross, a screenwriter and former roller derby girl, retreads well-worn YA themes as a path to a roller-derby plot line. A main character feeling too cool for school and her plebeian town? Check. Two parents who just don't understand? Check. A budding romance that leaves a best friend left in the dust? Check. Here, the teen angst is embodied in 16-year-old Bliss Cavendar, a blue-haired, Chuck Taylor–wearing indie rebel living in a tiny Texas town of country music–loving beauty-pageant fans. Yearning to escape the suffocating boredom, Bliss and her best friend, Pash Amini, crash a roller derby event in nearby Austin. The girls are entranced by the glammed-up skaters in heavy makeup and fishnet stockings who shove and elbow their way around a track. Bliss soon lies about her age, becomes a derby girl, meets a cute boy and learns several unsurprising life lessons. Despite being formulaic, the novel shines in describing the dashing world of roller derby, where the players are hot and have nasty names like Dinah Might, Eva Destruction and Princess Slaya. When Bliss describes watching “girls dive on the track, leap over one another, pile on the infield for brawls, fly over the rails into the crowd (more than once!)... and yet, you can tell they're having the time of their lives,” her naked enthusiasm for the edgy, underground sport injects some energy into an otherwise labored tale. Ages 14-up.

December 1, 2007
Gr 9 Up-Bliss Cavendar, 16, is a misfit. Her blue hair sticks out among all of the All-American look-alikes at her Bodeen, TX, high school. She doesn't fit in with her family, either. Her mother insists that she enter the Miss Bluebonnet beauty pageant but Bliss would rather be listening to punk rock. In desperation, she sneaks out at night to nearby Austin, joins a roller-derby league, and finds an exciting, older boyfriend. She lies to derby officials about her age, and to her parents about where she is for every practice and competition. In the end, her antics are exposed but her rebellion turns out to be just what was needed to make her mother accept her. This novel fails to explain what roller derby is, besides a bunch of girls on skates pushing into each other. Bliss is unlikable and at times obnoxious, especially during her encounters with her best friend. The choppy narration portrays teenagers as having a cavalier attitude about lying, stealing, drinking, and sex, and the author tries to win readers over with clever asides and the occasional curse word. It doesn't work."Julianna M. Helt, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA"

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